Assembling a single electronic board using SMD parts is doable using simple tools with tweezers and a fine tip soldering iron. However, it can become tedious after a few boards or simply if you start an actual production yourself.

Also, some parts are really hard to solder by classic means, and I ended up building a reflow oven to “bake” my boards.

If you’re not familiar with reflow soldering, I suggest you have a look to this wikipedia article for details.

For large boards, placing the SMD parts on the solder paste can really be an issue since your hands must travel above the board to reach the part location, with risks to drop the part and mess all your solder paste stencil work.

The SMD pick and place station is meant to help the operator traveling above the PCB, pick parts using vacuum, and place them with a straight, smooth and accurate vertical movement to the exact spot where it’s suppose to land.

Surprisingly enough, that station can be assembled with many classic hardware parts available for cheap.

Step #1:

To build the pick and place station, you'll need a 30-35 cm furniture leg (square section), a TV rotary stand, a pair of ball bearing drawer slides, a set of 6 assembly plates/strips, M5 screws and nuts (with self lock), a 10 cm piece of aluminium hinge profile tubing and 2 meter of L shaped aluminium profile. You'll also need a wooden plate or a plank. I used a left over filler plank from my ikea kitchen. It's covered with heat resistant vitrified coating which makes cleaning very easy.

The station is composed of a rotary stand to help orienting the PCB when working on it. It also has a traveling dolly mounted on the drawer slides as an arm rest to maintain it above the board. Finally, it has a small crank attached to the vertical leg with a vacuum pen mounted on a vertical spring loaded slide. This allows to pick the the SMD part using a hand or foot controlled vacuum pump then released and placed on the PCB.

Step #8:

Build the crank. The assembly metal strips didn't have a central hole so I used a drill press to get that done. Make sure you drill them at least by pair ("twin drilling"), both (or more) strips being attached by a screw and a nut at each end during the drilling operation. This way you make sure the central hole is perfectly centered and identical for each pair.

Step #13:

Step #14:

I first tested the pump using the vacuum suckers I got with a manual pick and place pen

Then I used a medical syringe needle as the end of my vacuum pen. I cut the needle with a dremel then mounted the vacuum suckers at the end of the syringe. You can find vacuum sucker sets at dealextreme.com, or just buy a cheap manual vacuum pen and re-use the suckers.

I recycled the needle protective cap as well, to make a mount and spacer for the air flow tap. The pump came with a nice 3m long silicone flexible tube that mounted perfectly on the protective cap I cut. You can fill it with some disposable tissues or anything that could act as a dust filter.

Step #15:

The pump is a mains-powered device, so I used a junction box to hold a sturdy, momentary pushbutton switch used to turn the pump on and off. A foot pedal switch could be used, but I found having everything on the table and using my other hand very convenient.

Step #17:

oh ! that’s indeed very similar. I wasn’t aware of that device/brand, I just implemented the basic ingredients of a pick and place station which are a rotary table, a sliding element over the board and a vacuum pen.